How To Save A Life
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Coda to "Similitude". Trip finds it difficult to be grateful to Jon and Phlox for saving his life when he finds out the method they used.


How To Save A Life

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _Star Trek: Enterprise_

Copyright: Paramount

/

_"Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend_

_Somewhere in all the bitterness._

_And I could have stayed up with you all night_

_Had I known how to save a life."_

\- "How To Save A Life", The Fray

/

Trip took one glance at the dead man in the torpedo casing and looked away. He felt light-headed and nauseated, unable to focus on the Captain's eulogy or on anything else, except on putting one foot in front of the other while they cleared the lunch bay. He heard the airlock rumbling shut behind him, but he didn't look out the viewport to see the coffin ejected into space. He couldn't. All he could see was that man's face seared into his mind.

He'd been young, poor guy, whoever he was, too young for this. Mid-thirties at the most. Dressed in a Starfleet engineer's uniform like one of his own junior officers. Light skin, blond hair (the same colour as Mom's and Lizzie's) cut short and parted on the side. Closed eyes, but they would've been blue (just like Dad's). A ski jump nose with a few faded freckles on it (his ex-girlfriend Natalie used to tease him, saying how cute it was, though he'd never understood why … )

_Goddamnit. _He couldn't pretend anymore. That wasn't some stranger. It wasn't even one of his juniors, which would have been bad enough.

That was him.

Every time he looked in the mirror from now on, he was going to see the reflection of a dead man.

He dragged himself down the corridor in a daze. But when someone's hand caught his arm from behind and someone's voice said "Trip, you okay?" – a voice he'd known and trusted for almost ten years, a voice he'd have followed anywhere, even to his death – all his confusion crystallized into rage.

_That son-of-a-bitch._

"I'm just peachy, Cap'n. Not every day you find out your own shipmates killed you and then come to your own funeral. Should be one for the history books, huh?"

Captain Archer swung Trip around to face him. The lines in the older man's face looked carved in stone, but whether he was angry, remorseful, exhausted or all three was impossible to tell. "In my ready room," he ordered.

_Aye, aye, sir. God forbid we have an honest talk where the crew can hear us. _But when Trip saw the worried brown eyes of Corporal Cole as she walked past in a line with the other MACOs, he saw the Captain's point. Morale was low enough, the last thing _Enterprise_ needed was a shouting match in the corridor. Too bad, because shouting was the very least of the unprofessional things he felt like doing right now.

As soon as the ready room door slid closed behind them, Archer sat down behind his desk, picked up his water polo ball, and tossed it at Trip – a lighter throw than he'd ever used before, which only made Trip angrier. "I'm listening."

"Good." Trip hurled the ball back at him. "'Cause _I've_ been listenin' to Phlox all morning."

He would never look at the Denobulan or his creatures again without getting a chill down his spine. If Vulcans felt more emotion than they showed, Trip suspected that Denobulans were the opposite – showing more, feeling less. It was the only way to explain how Phlox could raise a child to die as matter-of-factly as if it were still the alien larva from which it had been spawned. Still, Trip didn't blame Phlox. He blamed the man who had given Phlox his orders.

"He had so many cute little stories to tell about me – about him – ah, you know what I mean - "

"We called him Sim." A harder throw of the ball.

"What, like 'simulation'? The hell kinda name is that?" Trip burst out, unable to stay calm for even one more second. "And why even bother givin' him one when y'all were plannin' to cut out his brain as soon as he was big enough?" He slammed the ball onto the captain's desk so hard that the computer screen shook.

Archer looked up, and his face was no longer unreadable. This time, Trip could see that his commanding officer was every bit as angry as he was.

"We did it to save your life."

"Oh yeah? And who was there to save him?"

"He wasn't the real you!"

"Looked plenty real in the photos Phlox showed me. Creepiest damn thing I ever saw, the way he was holdin' that baby like a dad. The only parents I have are Charles and Katherine Tucker, and that was _their_ son y'all just cut open and shot into space!"

Trip could hear his own voice crack with impending tears, but he swallowed them down. He hadn't cried for Lizzie, feeling it would drain him of the anger that was the only thing driving him forward. It would be selfish to cry for his clone instead.

Right now, though, it was hard to tell where one loss began and the other ended. As mind-bending as the circumstances were, the Tucker family had lost another child today.

Not that he could tell his family about this. They'd never understand.

"Do you think that was easy for me?" Archer snarled, digging his hands into the surface of the water polo ball until his knuckles turned white. "Do you think I enjoyed sending someone to his death who looked and acted just like you? He stood there, right where you're standing, and he begged me for his life, and I had to say no. I had to threaten him, for God's sake - " Trip scoffed at the words _had to, _but Archer wasn't finished. " – but in the end he went willingly, which was more than I expected, and definitely more than I deserved."

Jon tossed the ball carelessly into a corner of the cabin and rubbed his hands over his face, as Trip had only seen him do when he was very tired, very miserable or both. Until today, Trip had never failed to sympathize when his friend looked like that. Even now, it was difficult to hate someone who so obviously hated himself.

"But," Jon continued, lifting his head to stare at Trip with renewed determination, "It was either that or let you die on the biobed, and I refused to do that. _Enterprise_ needs its chief engineer, and I … I need my friend. I'm not asking you to forgive me, but I am asking you to try to understand."

Trip had a strange impulse to laugh. This had to be the most twisted act of friendship he'd ever heard of, but nevertheless, it was also one of the most sincere. He could have argued that his engineers were highly qualified people and his second-in-command could have taken over if necessary. It was also true that dying on the biobed did appeal to him. If he had died, he might see his baby sister again and apologize for not protecting her. At the very least, he wouldn't have to carry this constant weight of grief anymore. He wouldn't have to continue with this mission and risk losing even more people he cared about, including – despite everything – that son-of-a-bitch sitting opposite him right now.

But there it was. If he'd died, he couldn't protect them. But since he was alive, there was at least a chance that he could help _Enterprise_ get out of the Expanse in one piece … and make the Xindi pay.

He thought of Sim in that torpedo tube and the other unjust deaths that this one reminded him of: Lizzie burned to ashes along with seven million others by the Xindi probe, Charles the Vissian cogenitor taking its own life because it wasn't allowed to climb mountains. Could he forgive such things? Could he understand?

"Dunno," he said hoarsely. "But I can promise you, until this mission's over, I'm not going anywhere."

He meant that in more than one sense, and judging by Jon's sharp upward glance, he knew it. But it was the best answer he could give.

Jon nodded gravely and said "You're dismissed," without any of the military brusqueness that usually accompanied those words. "Oh … and Trip?"

Having stooped to pick up the water polo ball so he wouldn't stumble over it on his way out, Trip straightened up and looked over his shoulder. "Yes, Cap'n?"

"Movie night is on Thursday. They're playing _A Fish Called Wanda _… are you coming?"

The more time they spent in the _Expanse_, the more comical the crew's movie choices became, in stubborn defiance of the darkness closing in around them. Trip remembered a time when he had loved that movie, and would have been the first to sweet-talk his shipmates into watching it with him. Especially T'Pol.

Beautiful T'Pol with her cool hands and quiet voice, his only comfort since this goddamn mission had begun, and the one person he felt least ready to talk to. He was afraid to hear her opinion about Sim. Had she argued for or against the clone's creation? For or against his death? Either way, Trip didn't think he could endure her answer. Still, he missed her. During movie night, they wouldn't have to talk. Just being in the same room with her might be enough.

Besides, Jon's question was about more than movie night. _Are you still my friend? _he was asking, the same way he'd asked Trip to watch a water polo game after that terrible falling out they'd had over the cogenitor's death. Because that was Jonathan Archer in a nutshell: he might destroy you, but never give up on you. That was why they'd become friends in the first place – because Trip was the same way. And if their places had been reversed, he'd have probably done the same thing.

_Son-of-a-bitch_, Trip thought, but with less venom this time, as he threw the ball neatly into his friend's outstretched hands.

"Tell Chef to break out the popcorn," he said. "I'll be there."


End file.
